Home»Blog» New Toolkit for Contemplative Community Building in Higher Education

New Toolkit for Contemplative Community Building in Higher Education

Posted on Feb 21, 2018

We have developed this .pdf toolkit to support the building of contemplative communities in higher education contexts.

The toolkit was created from the proceedings of a meeting held in April 2016, when CMind and the Fetzer Institute convened 26 individuals to discuss their experiences in creating contemplative communities in higher education. It would not have been possible to create this toolkit without the support of the Fetzer Institute, the writing and editing of Maia Duerr, or the experience and wisdom of our network, including the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education, a professional membership association which connects hundreds of education professionals worldwide. We hope that the toolkit will support the continued development of living and learning environments that support inquiry into meaning, purpose, and action.

The toolkit is organized into six sections, reflecting common phases and challenges:

Intention (Laying the Groundwork)

Invitation (Creating a Welcoming Community)

Sustainability (Building a Sustainable Community)

Meetings and Events

Conflict Transformation

Connecting the Dots (Being Part of a Larger Movement)

We hope that the resulting document contains a wealth of experience to inform your planning. Of course, no single, brief .pdf can encompass all our collected wisdom on community building. With that in mind, we intend this toolkit to be a living document, able to receive contributions from those who are doing the work. We invite you to dig in and let us know what you find useful here, and what’s missing: what could be improved?